MONTREAL — Quebec provincial police have formally charged their own former director and three other ex-bosses with fraud, theft and breach of trust.

Steven Chabot, Alfred Tremblay, Jean Audette and former top cop Richard Deschesnes are accused of siphoning money from a secret police fund to pay a bonus and illegal consulting fees.

The case has given the public a rare look into the internal workings of the police force, known as the SQ.

Deschesnes ran the SQ from June 2008 until October 2012, when the Parti Quebecois reassigned him shortly after it took power.

His co-accused, Chabot, who retired in 2010, was the SQ's assistant director in charge of criminal investigations. Audette was Chabot's successor.

Tremblay, the fourth man charged this week, was once a chief inspector at the SQ.

All four men were to be fingerprinted and photographed Wednesday at a Montreal police precinct.

The former officers are scheduled to appear at the Montreal courthouse on Feb. 13.

In December 2012, shortly after the PQ removed Deschesnes, Public Security Minister Stephane Bergeron held a news conference to announce an investigation into what he called "extremely disturbing" findings.

He said a secret SQ expense fund had been used for a severance payment and to hire a consultant who was ineligible to work for the government because of back taxes.

The off-the-books fund is earmarked for operations such as drug transactions by undercover officers or to pay informants.

At the time, the minister said the bonus was illegal and "could be a breach of trust by a public official, and fraud."

It later emerged that a $170,000 severance payment went to Chabot, the former assistant director who's at the centre of the probe.

The case took two dramatic turns in the past two months.

Chabot filed a $1.5-million defamation suit against current SQ director Mario Laprise, even getting a bailiff to serve papers directly to Laprise's home.

Chabot admits in his lawsuit that he received the $170,000 retirement bonus and that he was entitled to the money as part of an under-the-table deal.

He accuses the Parti Quebecois of leaking information about the secret deal to the media to harm him and Deschesnes.

Then, late last month, a suspicious fire destroyed a cottage co-owned by Laprise and other former police officers.

One of Laprise's partners in the chalet venture is Bruno Beaulieu, whom QMI Agency later revealed as the man hired by Quebec to investigate the police payments.

QMI's revelations prompted the PQ to issue public statements of support for Beaulieu's independence, despite his relationship with the SQ's current boss.

One person was previously arrested and charged in the spending scandal.

Denis Despelteau, a former SQ senior officer and consultant, was charged last June with fraud, breach of trust, forgery and theft.